
































































































































































































nm ~PFll &Z 

Book_ .S3 03" 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 






■BBS ;' : • 

































■ 

















































































































* 










. 







































































































CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 













* 




























A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 









































































l.WncS) 




CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 


A TRIP 

ON 

MANY WATERS 


COMPILED BY WORKERS OF THE 
WRITERS’ PROGRAM OF THE WORK 
PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION IN THE 
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA 


—JUNIOR PRESS BOOKS— 

ALBERfSfWHITMAN 

tr' 4^ 

CHICAGO 1940 








FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY .S3C.5 

John M. Carmody, Administrator 


WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION 
F. C. Harrington, Commissioner 
Florence Kerr, Assistant Commissioner 
Philip Mathews, State Administrator 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 

Sponsored and copyrighted, 1940, by Division of Extension Education 
Board of Public Education, Philadelphia 




PREFACE 


A Trip on Many Waters is the sixth in the 
Children's Science Series. It was prepared by 
the Pennsylvania Writers' Project, sponsored by 
the Pennsylvania Department of Public In¬ 
struction. 

This booklet was written by Mark Bartman 
and edited by Katharine Britton, Field Editor. 

Acknowledgment is made to R. G. Chaffey 
of the Department of Geology, the Academy of 
Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, for acting as 
consultant in assuring accuracy of the text and 
illustrations. 

Color illustrations for jacket and book are the 
work of David Cain. Other illustrations are 
the work of Mary Procopio, Edward Giordano, 
and Charles Rossner. The map was drawn by 
Russell Worman. 

Conrad C. Lesley 
Acting State Supervisor 



The Walls of Rock are as High as a Forty-story Building 






















































































A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 


Most of us live near some body of 
water. Perhaps it is a brook, or a creek, 
or a big river. The water flows along 
and we don’t know where it comes from, 
or where it is going. But we do know 
that it is going to empty at last into a 
big lake or an ocean. 

The stream does not go alone on its 
long journey to the sea. Along the way 
it meets other streams. They join one 
another and flow on together. 


10 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

Long ago the Greeks watched the meet¬ 
ing of such streams. They thought the 
waters looked as if they were tumbling 
about together like a couple of romping 
playmates. So the Greeks made up a 
story about it. 

They said that one day a beautiful girl 
named Arethusa sat alone beside a 
stream in the woods. She was dipping 
her feet in the cool water when a big 
wave washed toward her and five foamy 
fingers stretched out to her. She 
screamed with fear, for she saw in the 
water the shape of the river god Al- 
pheus. 

Jumping to her feet, Arethusa ran. 
She felt spray stinging her body. The 
hands of the river god were touching her 
hair. He was calling softly, "Arethusa, 
do not rim from me.” 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 11 

Arethusa prayed to the goddess of the 
mist to hide her. And suddenly, Are¬ 
thusa was gone. In her place was a 
cloud of tiny drops of water that fell to 
the earth in a shower. Arethusa had 
become a beautiful little dancing brook. 

Now she felt no fear, and she ran on 
gladly as if she were playing a game with 
Alpheus. Over rocks and down hills she 
leaped. And always the river god ran 
beside her, calling to her in his low sweet 
voice. 

At last Arethusa held out her hand to 
him and they met, just as brooks and 
rivers have been meeting ever since. 

If we followed any big stream of water 
for a long way, we should find many 
places where other streams flow into it. 
These streams that flow into it are its 
tributaries, or its branches. The stream 


12 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

and all its tributaries make up a river 
system. The land drained by the river 
system is the river basin. 

The streams of the river system flow 
through the basin and carry all the extra 
water down to the sea. They drain the 
land. They carry a great deal of dirt 
and stones with them, too. And because 
they carry so much earth from one place 
to another they change the shape of the 
land. 

Each stream in any river system has a 
beginning. The place where a stream 
begins is its source. The source may be 
a small spring, or a tiny pond. But 
what made the spring or the pond? How 
did the river really begin? 

A river begins with drops of rain. 
The rain that falls on the hills must run 
down to lower ground. And as it runs 



A Mountain Brook Rushes along Swiftly. 




















































































14 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

down it makes little pathways in the 
earth. More and more rain falls, digging 
bigger and bigger pathways. 

When spring comes, the snows on the 
mountain will melt. These melting 
snows run down the mountain and flow 
along the biggest of the pathways made 
by the rain. Then this becomes a brook, 
a small stream of water. Just like Are- 
thusa, it goes bubbling and gurgling and 
leaping along. 

A small brook rushes along swiftly 
when it is leaping downhill. And it is 
very strong, because it is moving so fast. 
It is strong enough to push most things 
out of its way, and so it rushes straight 
down the hills. If rocks try to stop it, 
the water picks them up and tumbles 
them along with it. It carries sticks 
and dirt, too. 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 15 
Even the great Mississippi River, the 
Father of Waters, began in this way. 
It is the largest river in the United 
States and one of the largest in the 
world. But it began just as small rivers 
do, with drops of rain. 

Far up in the northern part of the 
United States runs a brook. It is in 
the state of Minnesota, about 100 miles 
from the Canadian border. This brook 
is called the Infant Mississippi. It is 
called that because it is one of the little 
streams from which the big Mississippi 
grows. This is the source, or beginning, 
of one of the many streams in the Missis¬ 
sippi River system. 

Long, long ago there was no brook at 
this spot. But rain fell and started to 
move forward, and made a pathway. 
Then other drops of rain and melting snow 


16 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

from the hills flowed along the pathway 
and made a brook. 

Coming down from the northern Min¬ 
nesota hills the Infant Mississippi is cold 
and clear as glass. It ripples over rocks 
and hurries along until suddenly it comes 
to a great big hollow in the earth. It 
flows into this hollow and fills it, just 
as water fills a washbowl in the bath¬ 
room. 

There are many of these big hollows 
in the northern part of our country. 
Thousands of years ago they were made 
by huge mountains of ice that moved 
over the land. These ice mountains, 
called glaciers, moved along slowly, and 
they scraped out big holes in the earth. 

Some of these hollows have filled with 
water and now they are lakes. The 
Great Lakes were made in this way. 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 


17 



Rapids are Very Dangerous to Swimmers and Canoes. 


They are so large that, on the map, 
they look like great seas. If we could 
stand beside one of them, it would seem 
almost like the ocean to us. 

The hollow into which the little Mis¬ 
sissippi flows makes a lake — like the 
Great Lakes, but very much smaller than 
any of them. It is called Lake Itasca. 
Many little streams flow into Lake 








18 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

Itasca, and the little brook mixes with 
these streams. Then they all flow out 
of the lake together. 

When the Mississippi leaves Lake 
Itasca, it is no longer an infant. It is 
larger than a brook, but it is not yet large 
enough to be called a river. It is a 
creek. 

We can usually jump right over a 
brook. But a creek is too big to jump 
over. Still, it is not big enough to float 
a big boat. Only a river can do that. 
A river is often deep enough and broad 
enough to carry several boats beside each 
other. Some rivers are more than a 
mile wide. 

A creek has a bigger bed than a brook. 
The bed is the ground the stream flows 
over. And the banks or sides of the 
creek are higher. The creek that leaves 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 19 
Lake Itasca is about as wide as a small 
room, and it is almost two feet deep. 

Now the Mississippi sweeps in a wide 
circle through damp muddy land where 
flags and reeds and water grass grow. 
This is called a swamp. Every once in 
a while the creek flows into other lakes 
much larger than Itasca. From each 
it gathers more water. 

All this time the Mississippi is going 
downhill. Its water is still clear, and 
sometimes it becomes very playful. As 
it rushes along, it finds many rocks in 
its way. Over the rocks it jumps, swirl¬ 
ing and twisting, splashing and making 
a great noise. 

The places where a stream of water 
acts like this are called rapids. Rapids 
are very dangerous to swimmers and 
canoes. The water is flowing very fast. 





















22 children’s Science series 

It sweeps around the rocks and pounds 
against them. It would smash a canoe 
to pieces. It would throw a swimmer 
against the rocks and hurt him. 

But after a while the Mississippi 
changes so that it seems like a different 
stream. It seems to settle down, and be¬ 
comes more quiet, more peaceful. 

Now it is big enough to be called a 
river. Many streams have flowed into 
it to make it grow. It is in the second 
part of its journey to the sea. 

Very many things are different about 
the second part of any river’s journey. 
The second part begins when a stream 
comes out of the hills. Its bed is not 
tilted downhill so much now. The 
stream is running almost on level ground. 

And because of this, the stream runs 
more slowly. The water is not so strong 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 


23 



At Last Part of the Pile of Stones Sticks out of the Water. 


now as it was when it was moving fast. 
So it cannot carry so many stones or 
such heavy stones. It leaves the larger 
stones in its bed and carries away only 
the mud and the sand. That is why the 
middle part of a river is very stony. The 
river bed would hurt our feet if we 
walked on it. 

Sometimes a stream will drop many 
large stones in one pile. Then, as the 
water flows past these stones, some dirt 
catches there. More and more dirt is 




24 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 
dropped. The pile keeps growing. At 
last part of it sticks out of the water. 
And so an island is made. 

The Mississippi is dotted with islands 
all through the middle part of its course. 
More than seven hundred and fifty of 
the islands are large enough to have 
names. Most of them are covered with 
trees, and some of them have caves. 

Another thing happens in the middle 
part of the stream because the water is 
moving more slowly. The water begins 
to twist. And as it twists, it wears away 
the right bank in one place and a little 
farther on it wears away the left bank. 
Then it wears the right bank again, and 
then the left. And so little by little the 
river begins to curve. It no longer runs 
straight as it did when it was running 
downhill. 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 25 

And little by little the river curves 
more and more. It swings farther to 
one side and then farther to the other. 
As it swings like this, it is always wear¬ 
ing away the land on the outside of the 
curves. And on the inside of the curves 
it leaves a layer of mud and dirt. 

As the water wears away the land on 
the outside of the curves and fills in new 
dirt on the inside of the curves, the river 
bed is slowly changing its place all the 
time. The stream is like a great snake, 
curling this way and that, moving its 
great body from place to place, eating 
out a wide pathway for itself. 

A stream that flows like this is called 
a meandering stream. When the 
meander has been wearing away the 
land on the outside of its curves for a 
very long time, always changing its bed, 


26 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

there will be a broad plain around the 
river. And at some time during its long 
story, the river has flowed through every 
foot of that plain, and has left behind a 
layer of rich dirt. 

On each edge of the plain, or valley, 
the land rises sharply. If we could look 
down on the valley from the sky, it would 
look like a very broad road running be¬ 
tween high straight walls. And the 
river would be winding between these 
walls. 

The valley of the middle part of the 
Mississippi is three miles wide in some 
places. In other places it is eight miles 
across. And the walls of rock on each 
side of the valley are as high as a forty- 
story building in some places. 

For miles the river winds between 
these rocky bluffs and cliffs. Sometimes 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 27 

it flows right beside one for a while. 
Then it cuts over to the other. If we 
stand on the top of the bluffs, the river far 
below us looks like a curling silver road. 

At one time, very long ago, there must 
have been no river here. There was just 
a broad table of solid rock. Yet the 
water wore away that rock and made 
this broad valley. 

Water can wear away rock just by 
washing over it for a long time. But 
the water in the river does not wear 
away its bed and its banks all by itself. 
The stones that it carries help it. These 
stones rub against the banks and the 
bed of the river. Little by little they 
help to cut out the river valley. It takes 
many thousands of years to do this. 

Sometimes a river cuts a very deep 
and narrow valley, with very high walls. 


28 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

A valley that looks like this is called 
a canyon. One of the most beautiful 
canyons in the world is the Grand Can¬ 
yon of the Colorado River, in the western 
part of the United States. 

Perhaps the Mississippi Valley looked 
like the Grand Canyon once upon a time. 
We do not know. 

But we do know that the river is 
always changing the shape of the land 
around it. Some day the rocky bluffs 
that face each other eight miles apart 
will not be there. The river will cut 
even farther into the land and wear 
them away altogether. 

The Mississippi winds very calmly, 
almost lazily between these high valley 
walls. But all of a sudden an accident 
happens to jar it out of its sleep. It 
trips right over a cliff! 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 29 



The cliff is so high and steep that there 
is no place for the river to step down 
slowly and carefully. It pours over the 
edge of the cliff like rain pouring off a 
roof after a thunder-storm. Tons of 
water fall over the cliff with a great 
roar. Whipping up a great spray, the 
water wets everything. As the rays of 














30 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

the sun play on it, we see many rain¬ 
bows. 

The funny thing is that the river is 
tripping over a cliff that was made by 
the river. Here where the cliff stands 
there were once two layers of rock, one 
on top of the other. The top layer was 
hard and so the water could not wear 
much of it away. Underneath was soft 
rock and the river wore that away 
quickly. So the hard rock was left, 
sticking out to form a cliff. 

Gracefully, the Mississippi gathers it¬ 
self up from its fall. Lazily it moves 
on again as if nothing at all had 
happened to it. Farther down stream 
something really important is going to 
happen. The rocky bluffs are going to 
end and the river is going to meet the 
great Missouri River. 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 31 

All this time, as it flows along mile 
after mile, the river has been meeting 
other large streams, and it has been 
growing. During its whole journey to 
the sea it will meet all together two hun¬ 
dred and fifty other streams or tribu¬ 
taries. 

Some of the tributaries are very large, 
and they stretch for many miles. In 
fact, the Mississippi river system spreads 
out so far that it drains almost one-half 
of the whole United States. And the 
basin drained by the river system is so 
big that sixty million people live within 
it. That is almost one-half of all the 
people in the United States. 

The largest of all the large tributaries 
is the Missouri River. Once the 
Missouri has flowed into the Mississippi, 
the river is really full-grown. In some 



























A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 33 
places it becomes more than a mile and 
a quarter wide. Sometimes it is thirty 
feet deep. It is huge and powerful and 
important. The Mississippi-Missouri 
system is the longest river system in 
the world. 

For a few miles after the Missouri has 
joined the Mississippi we see a strange 
thing. The two rivers have joined, but 
their waters do not mix right away. The 
clear, clean Mississippi water flows side 
by side in the same bed with the red 
muddy waters of the Missouri. Then 
bit by bit the waters run together and 
the two rivers really become one. 

Now we are in the part of the Mis¬ 
sissippi that we know about from songs 
and stories. It is full of excitement and 
mystery. 

Men who study the earth to learn 


34 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

about things that happened long ago tell 
us that once the Gulf of Mexico extended 
much farther inland than it does now. 
It covered all of the Mississippi Valley 
up to Cape Girardeau, where the Mis¬ 
souri flows into the river. The Missis¬ 
sippi was much shorter then than it is 
now, and it emptied into this great sea. 

Year after year the river carried mud 
and dirt and stones from the hills down 
to the sea. Year after year it dropped 
the dirt upon the bottom of the sea. 
Little by little it added to the land. The 
sea was pushed back farther and farther. 
At last all the land was built up down to 
where the Gulf of Mexico begins today. 

And the river is still adding more land. 
It is still pushing the sea back, very, 
very slowly. 

This broad plain that the river built 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 35 
is very important to men. Crops can 
be grown here easily, for the soil is rich 
and fertile. 

The land around most rivers is fertile. 
Much fresh, new earth has been washed 
down upon it from the hills and moun¬ 
tains. And this land is close to the 
water which all living things must have. 
When men settled in new countries, they 
almost always settled near rivers or 
other bodies of water. 

Because the Mississippi Valley is so 
rich, it has always drawn men to it. 
Many years ago, before white men came 
to America, there were Indians here. 

And before the Indians there were 
other people. Scattered through the 
whole Mississippi basin are strange piles 
of stone and earth built by these early 
settlers. We call these people the 


TERRITORY 



Once the Gulf of Mexico covered the Mississippi Valley 
up to Cape Girardeau. 




A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 37 

Mound Builders. Within the mounds 
these people lived and worked, perhaps. 
They grew com in the rich valleys as 
people do today. 

The river has never stopped its work 
of making the valley fertile. Often 
when the snows are melting it overflows 
its banks and spreads all over the land 
for many miles. To all this land the 
flood carries rich fresh earth. This earth 
is left on the land when the river returns 
to its bed. The land covered by the 
floods is called the flood plain. 

Flood plains of all rivers are good for 
farming. One of the richest flood plains 
in the world is that of the Nile River in 
Egypt. The Egyptians are always glad 
for the flood because it brings them new 
earth from far-off places. 

When the Nile begins to overflow, the 


38 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 



Flood Waters Carry off Barns and Houses. 


people living near the river pack their 
things and go away. When the Nile 
returns to its proper size, they go back 
and start their planting. The new earth 
and the fresh water have done the tired, 
thirsty earth much good. It will now 
have enough strength to give rich har¬ 
vests again. 

But all the work of floods is not good. 
Flood waters tear down fences and carry 








A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 39 
off barns and houses. They drown ani¬ 
mals. Sometimes they drown people. 
And sometimes they sweep over fields 
of growing grain and other crops. 

The floods on the Mississippi are much 
wilder than those on the Nile. So the 
people around the river are afraid of 
the floods. They watch the river all the 
time with great care. 

And they try to make the river do 
what they want it to. They build ce¬ 
ment sides to keep the water in a certain 
bed. They build the banks higher to 
keep the water from overflowing. This 
is done by piling dirt along the banks 
and planting grass to hold the dirt in 
place. 

These raised banks are called levees. 
They are like grass hills, sloping gently 
up to the river. 


40 CHILDREN'S SCIENCE SERIES 

All along this part of the Mississippi 
the floods have made small streams that 
leave the river and run alone for a while. 
Then they come back and join it again. 

These runaway streams are made 
when the water overflows and finds new 
pathways in the land beyond its bed. 
These are the Mississippi bayous. They 
are the river’s children. Now it can 
really be called the Father of Waters. 

By the time the river has reached the 
last part of its journey it is sometimes 
more than sixty feet deep, and it carries 
tons and tons of dirt. It is traveling 
south toward the Gulf of Mexico, and it 
is going to pour all its water and dirt 
into the Gulf. The place where the river 
meets the Gulf is the mouth of the river. 
The mouth is the gateway between the 
river and the sea. 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 41 

When the moving water of a river 
meets the quiet water of the sea, it must 
slow down. As it slows down, it can no 
longer hold the dirt it is carrying. This 
dirt sinks to the ocean bed. 

Every day the river drops tons of dirt 
at its mouth. New land is added to 
the old land, and little by little the 
mouth of the river changes. 

This has been going on for thousands 
of years at the mouth of the Mississippi. 
The new land formed sticks out a little 
into the Gulf. The river has to find 
its way over this new land, and so it 
makes several pathways across it. So 
the river really flows into the Gulf at 
three places. This land is called the 
Mississippi Delta. 

On the waters flowing through the 
Delta we see many boats. Some of them 


42 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

are ocean steamers loaded with freight 
for New Orleans. Some are going even 
farther up the Mississippi. For the 
river is so deep and wide that even very 
big ships can easily sail far up. 

Since the Mississippi is so easy to 
sail on, it has always been used as a 
great highway. The Indians traveled 
upon it in canoes. When the first ex¬ 
plorers came they used it to find their 
way deep into the heart of the Middle 
West and to reach the West. Later it 
was used by fur traders, and then by 
settlers. 

When the Middle West began to grow, 
the Mississippi became the highway for 
trade. There were almost no roads at 
that time and none of the few roads was 
very good or very long. But on the river 
men could carry goods for many miles. 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 43 
They built rafts and flatboats. The 
rafts were just logs tied together. Some 
of them were as big as a baseball field. 
On these rafts and flatboats men could 
float com and pork, flour and animal 
skins and furs all the way from the 
North down to the Gulf of Mexico. 

When they reached the Gulf they 
would come back up the river, pushing 
the raft with long poles. It took nine 



They Build the Banks Higher to Keep the Water from 
Overflowing, 


44 CHILDREN'S SCIENCE SERIES 

months to make this whole trip. And 
it was a trip full of danger. 

One hundred years ago there were 
four thousand flatboats on the river. 
But already steamboats were being 
made. A few years later there were 
more than three thousand steamboats. 
The river was crowded with boats. 
There was coal to be carried from the 
East to the South. There were sugar 
and grain and cotton to be brought from 
the South to the North. Big cities grew 
up along the Mississippi. It became a 
very important river. 

But the river was not always kind to 
the men who sailed upon it. Its bed 
changed from day to day. A place that 
had been fifteen feet deep when a boat 
passed it at one time might be only two 
feet deep when the boat came by again. 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 45 
So many boats met with accidents and 
were lost. 

The men who were willing to sail on 
the Mississippi River had to be strong 
and daring. They were men much like 
the early explorers. They were men 
who loved adventure and a free life. 

When the railroads began to grow, 
there was not much use for the river. 
The Mississippi was no longer so 
crowded with boats as it had been once. 
But now the United States Government 
is making the river deeper so that bigger 
boats can sail there. Then the big ships 
that bring goods from other lands can 
carry their cargoes far up the river with¬ 
out using the railroad. We are finding 
new ways of using the river as a highway. 

The Government is doing this not only 
with the Mississippi, but with other 


46 CHILDREN'S SCIENCE SERIES 

rivers all over the country. For the 
Mississippi is like other rivers, except 
that it is so much bigger. All of our 
rivers have been used as roads for trad¬ 
ing. Most big rivers have many big 
cities on their banks. And most rivers 
have farms and barns and orchards along 
their banks. 

If we think of a little tree with its 
small twigs and branches, and then 
think of a big spreading tree with 
branches that stretch ’way up toward 
the sky and far out over a lawn, we can 
see how a little river system seems be¬ 
side the big Mississippi system. Yet the 
trees are really very much alike in most 
ways. 

And the big and little rivers, too, are 
alike. All of them, the largest as well 
as the smallest, begin in the same way. 


A TRIP ON MANY WATERS 47 
And they all end in the same way. They 
flow into the sea or a big lake. 

But the water from all these rivers 
does not stay in the ocean. The sun 
shines upon it and heats it. Some of 
the water turns into mist and floats up 
into the sky and makes clouds. After 
a while there are so many clouds in the 
sky that the air cannot hold them. 
When the warm clouds meet cool air or 
cool wind they turn into drops of water 
again. The drops of water fall back to 
the earth as rain. 

This rain makes little pathways in the 
earth. More rain falls upon the path¬ 
ways and makes a brook. The brook 
grows larger and becomes a river. The 
river flows for many miles until it emp¬ 
ties into the ocean again. 

And so these drops of water travel 


48 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

farther and have more adventures than 
any of us ever do. They may flow over 
many miles of America, cross the sky 
in clouds, and then travel in rivers over 
many miles of other lands. 

The same drops that tossed the ships 
of Columbus about when he sailed across 
the sea may now be flowing under the 
steamships that carry oil along the Mis¬ 
sissippi. And thousands of years from 
now they will still be making new rivers 
for other people to travel on. 




2-f2.-2.8fe. in 



. 















































































































































Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 






















































